Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding - Theatre Review

Photo by Julia Edda PapE

By: Angela Guardiani

The Toronto Fringe Festival is back in all its beautiful, messy, enthusiastic creative energy. What a joy! Here’s the first of two Fringe reviews for shows seen within a 24-hour window. We’re starting off with Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding.

I’ve got a friend who introduced himself to me by cheerfully asking “So, what small Ontario town are you from?” The fact that I am not from a small Ontario town and did in fact grow up in Toronto makes me an anomaly, he claims. Toronto is full of people from small towns looking for something different. Not necessarily better, he says - just different.

Maggie Chun doesn’t think she’s looking for different. It’s the morning of her wedding day in tiny Windser, Ontario (yes Windser with an e). Her dress is lovely, her best friend/wedding planner has every detail down to the cherubs sculpted from butter on lock, her intended has a bright career ahead of him working in the combination mayor’s office and deli. And yet (there’s always a yet), when her childhood crush walks through the hotel lobby dressed in a Wes Anderson-esque pink bellhop’s uniform, different starts to look a lot more interesting.

From the description, it’s easy to think you’re in for a whimsical rom-com, (and there are definitely some over-the-top quirky flourishes, like a cowboy hat that guides its wearer to their fate like a Sorting Hat that went to Texas.) But the romance is just the catalyst that sparks all sorts of complex emotions into play. Characters long to be seen, to be understood, to be liked. They need to feel secure and bonded to home at the same time they want to take risks and explore. And if you’ll forgive the eighties power ballad reference, they want to know what love is, from a stomach-churning crush to supportive maternal affection to bone-deep certainty that this is the person you want to spend your life with.

Maggie Chun’s not perfect. The dialogue feels clunky and repetitive in places and there’s some awkward exposition dragging the pace down in the beginning. At the same time, though, there’s some shimmering gems of writing that hit just perfectly - one character gleefully describes California as a place where “they have donuts that taste of cereal and cereal that tastes of donuts!” Another, in a moment that encapsulates the whole awkward, honest, corny, heartfelt vibe of the show, explains that “love, even when lost, is never wasted.” Maggie Chun deserves her big-city glow up, but I hope she - and the show with her name on it - never lose that small-town sweetness.

Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding plays at the Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst Street) from July 5 - 16, 2023. Tickets are available for purchase online at: Maggie Chun's First Love and Last Wedding | Toronto Fringe Festival (fringetoronto.com)